1 September 2006
(This was first published in the(sydney)magazine in September 2006.)
Produced by cosseted cattle, this beef is expensive, highly prized and in short supply. Matthew Evans unravels some meat myths.
Reclining in a sunlit field listening to Beethoven's Fifth, she looks the picture of happiness. While her supple shoulders and curvy thighs are massaged by one manservant, another pours a beer. But this image is not as sweet as it seems. Its subject is an almost mythical cow being primed for slaughter, while the massage, music and beer are supposedly part of the fattening process that will culminate on $150-plus plates.
Of course, this isn't just any old cow, it's a wagyu - a breed loaded with prestige and price. If you believe the stories - and you shouldn't - these cattle are regularly fed beer, massaged, treated to music (including live sopranos) and, in more extreme versions, strung in harnesses so they never have to walk. These stories have been bandied about since wagyu, long prized in Japan, began to infiltrate the world's best restaurants about 10 years ago.
It's now Australia's turn. Since the first $240 steak appeared at the now-defunct Chicane in 2003, wagyu has stampeded onto local menus. It has been used as corned beef, wagyu cheeks, wagyu pie, tataki, daube, hamburgers, tartare and steak. With it, we have rediscovered the flavour of meat and lost our fear of fat.
"The juiciness is second to none," raves Matt Moran, chef at the Toaster's flagship fine diner, Aria. Moran is a fan of the highly marbled, high-fat wagyu of Victorian farmer David Blackmore. "It's not [listed] on the menu," says Moran, "because people think, 'Why should I pay $100 for a steak?' It's better if we can explain why it's so good and why it should be eaten in moderation." Despite the cost, Aria shifts more than five kilograms of the stuff a week. Other chefs are equally enthusiastic. Tetsuya Wakuda reckons "the meat itself is so good, all we do is not spoil it." Currently he's rolling slivers of the meat and grilling the outside to create a textural effect similar to pastry mille feuille, with a wasabi-scented jus.
At the newly three-hatted Bilson's, three cuts of wagyu grace a mixed plate for $45.Over at Guillaume at Bennelong, a rib-eye of wagyu beef (1.2kg on the bone, 800g off) sells for $160 for two, while at Becasse, Justin North serves 900g of dry-aged rib at $170 for two. "It sells really well," says North, who adds that often a businessman will eat his way through the whole dish.
Wagyu is a huge international marketing success, selling at extortionate prices in places as disparate as the Middle East, the US and Taiwan. At a cost of up to $600 a kilogram in Japan and nearly $200 here, it was responsible for kick-starting the "world's most expensive" dish publicity war. American restaurants are pushing burgers upwards of $50, there was the $2466 Golden Bon Vivant wagyu pie at Britain's Fence Gate Inn and even Selfridges in London bought into the hype, selling a wagyu, foie gras and brie sandwich for the ridiculous sum of $210.
Wagyu, which means "Japanese (wa) cattle (gyu)", is prized for the fine threads of fat that run through muscles rather than around them. This marbling, a result of breed and handling, can signify the two holy grails of meat: taste and tenderness.
The rivulets of fat in wagyu are much better for you than regular meat fat, being high in good fats - mono-unsaturates - with a high proportion of oleic acids, the kind of fatty acids normally associated with olive oil.
But while wagyu beef can be many things in Australia, most of it isn't full blood. In Japan they make a distinction between crossbred and full-blood wagyu. Here, wagyu is wagyu, whether it comes from pure genetic stock or is a percentage of the Japanese breed. The word helps the meat to sell at a premium, even if it is no better than a long-fed Angus or Hereford.
Self-confessed steak lover Robert Marchetti, head chef at Icebergs Dining Room & Bar in Bondi, reckons wagyu can be a cracker of a meat but is not convinced about what's on offer. "At least 99 per cent of what's on the market isn't up to the standard of Japan," claims Marchetti, who has worked in Nagoya. "There's a question over what actually is wagyu. Every second restaurant says it has wagyu when it doesn't."
Mark Best of Marque in Surry Hills loves heavily marbled wagyu but is also cynical about much of it. "I think it's gone a bit crazy," he says. "The trouble for the public is that what a lot of people are putting on their menus shouldn't be called wagyu."
Marchetti, Best and Moran actually prefer a mature, dry-aged steak from breeds more traditional to Australia, such as Angus. But like most chefs, they believe wagyu's character is rare and incredible. It's just not the steak we're used to. As Moran points out, "Wagyu has to be eaten in really small portions. We have to get rid of this thing about eating a really large wagyu steak. It makes you feel sick."
Australia's bloodlines of black wagyu are descended from cattle that came predominantly from around the town of Kobe - hence it used to be known as Kobe beef. Originally bred as beasts of burden, it's only in the past half-century they've been fattened solely for meat. The Japanese classify them as a national treasure but we have only been able to breed them up to marketable levels here since the 1990s.
At Security Foods' contract feedlots near Albury, there are no fat ladies testing their tonsils, no cans of lager being opened, no Swedish masseurs on hand. In fact, there is just a big shed with open sides and lots of good-sized, mostly front-heavy cattle eating a formulated feed. "I don't employ tractor drivers, I employ chefs," laughs Dallas Schuller, who manages this feedlot and another further west. "We prepare 2000 meals day and night. They're worse than restaurant people, those cattle."
Each cow eats up to 16 kilograms a day, says Schuller, fingering a handful of the feed. A mix of corn, straw and molasses, the 10 to 12 ingredients are predominantly human grade. It smells as good as muesli.
"I hope you brought your morning milk," he quips.
Security Foods, a big player in the business, is run by veterinarian John Griffiths in partnership with high-profile retailer Gerry Harvey. Although Harvey is better known for, in his words, "flogging fridges" at Harvey Norman, it was his idea to try fattening wagyu a few years ago. "When you've got something different at the top end of the market," says Harvey, "that's where you'll make money."
While Harvey sees it makes business sense, it is Griffiths who can talk the legs off a fully grown F1 cross on the topic. Griffiths ran a butcher's shop in Armidale in the early 1980s and knows the industry from most sides - producer, vet, geneticist and exporter. "He's always been into meat," says Harvey. "Griffo's now in Utopia."
"There's a lot of hoo-ha about rations," says Griffiths, who looks like a well-heeled, sun-blessed squatter. "There's hocus-pocus and myths. But it's only part of the way we get results." Their feed, unlike that of many feedlots, contains no hormone growth promotants, no antibiotics and no genetically modified products.
Security Foods, named with an eye on international clients and their penchant for clean, green, safe products, is dramatically expanding its wagyu herd. "We could sell 20, 50 times as much as we currently produce," says Harvey. In the next few years, they are hoping to increase processing from about 4000 head a year to between 20,000 and 25,000.
Security Foods crosses Holstein (Friesian) dairy cattle with the wagyu, the same predominant crossbreed as Japan. Dairy farmers raise the calves for a year, then a feedlot takes over. Most cattle are slaughtered at 24 to 28 months of age, older than regular beef you buy in this country.
The cattle, a large, dark brown to black breed, are considered ugly by traditional Aussie standards because of their stocky legs and overdeveloped forequarters. They're a fine if unremarkable-looking animal to an outsider: long lashes, big soppy heads and friendly demeanour. It is a shame they are cooped up in pens but feedlots - where animals are kept under cover and away from a natural floor or fresh grass - are the way wagyu are fattened. Traditionally, these cows are housed under a lean-to at the back of a house in Japan.
The rearing is as humane as it can be. "It doesn't take much of a hiccup to put you back months," says Griffiths. When wagyu become stressed, they rapidly mobilise the intramuscular fat and lose their marbling.
Security Foods is the big brand, processing some 340 head of wagyu a month. In contrast, David Blackmore is the artisan, selling only 25 to 30. "We ship them in horse transport," explains David's wife, Julie, "because it's less stressful."
At their property, next to the Goulburn River in the Victorian high country, tall, handsome, full-blood young wagyu graze on emerald-coloured grass near the road to the house. Despite the lack of rain, it's lush-looking pasture thanks to irrigation and "about 12 foot of topsoil" on the river flats, according to Blackmore. The fertile former dairy country is brilliant fattening land, the best start Blackmore could hope to give his 2000 head of prized black cattle.
A pioneer in bringing wagyu genetics to Australia, Blackmore is a strapping fifth-generation Australian farmer who knows more about breeds than most people and only sells full-blood wagyu under the Blackmore brand. With his mane of swept-back salt-and-pepper hair, he is the man most chefs think of as the emperor of wagyu. Blackmore sells some of the best Japanese-style beef you can get outside Japan. He sells to the Japanese, too, as well as to Thomas Keller, arguably the best chef in America, of French Laundry fame.
The reason Keller and other international chefs are sourcing Blackmore's meat is for its quality. The cattle are chosen selectively for our climate and put on feedlots for 500 to 600 days - possibly the longest in the country. They do not get music or shiatsu but there is little else they could want.
"Our rations are one of the most secret things we've got," says Blackmore. "It costs $1500 to $1800 per head" - a lot more expensive than just letting them eat grass.
Blackmore does slip a beer to the occasional animal. "They can get bored and go off their feed," he explains. "If that happens, a bottle of stout [because of the yeast] gets everything going again." But massaged cattle constantly drunk on beer? After 10 trips to Japan, he doesn't think so.
Blackmore knocks back about 10 international clients a week. "We can't supply many more than we already do but I hate saying no."
Security Foods and Blackmore could easily export their entire production, such is the demand for wagyu, which commands high prices because of the time it takes to mature, the amount of food the animals require, the difficulty and expense with genetics and the care that must be taken. Customers in a supermarket in Korea can even scan the steak and see a photo of the animal it came from.
It is this level of care, from conception to the consumer, that sets top-level wagyu apart from the rest. It's lucky that Australians have access to the prized beef considering the international attention it garners.
So next time you're sitting down to a $100-plus steak at a flagship Sydney restaurant and wonder why it costs so much, be thankful you didn't have to fly to Hong Kong, Tokyo or Moscow to eat it. And then brag to all your friends about the beer-swilling, massaged, music-loving cattle that went into it. If nothing else, at least it makes a good story. (s)
Wagyu or not wagyu?
What does wagyu taste like?
Good, marbled, full-blood wagyu is very soft. The fat melts at a lower temperature than other beef and leaves no greasiness in the mouth, even when eaten raw, although some crossbreeds can leave a greasy feeling. Heavily marbled wagyu is enormously rich - a few slivers is enough - and the flavour is subtle and intriguing, gently sweet with a lingering savoury character. It is not robust like aged red meat. Lightly marbled wagyu has more richness than most steak.
What should wagyu meat look like?
In Australia we score marbling up to 9+ by comparing a cross-section of meat to standardised cards. The higher the score, the more marbling. So what score is best? Well, if you want the traditional 200g-300g steak, you don't want a super-high score - 4-5 is more than enough. The ultimate wagyu experience is prohibitively expensive but a few slivers of premium meat are enormously satisfying.
Heavily marbled wagyu does not cook like ordinary beef. Think of it as belly tuna and treat it similarly, searing the outside but not cooking it through.
How can I tell it's the real thing?
In a restaurant? Good luck. Sometimes you must take it on trust. That said, price is an indicator. So is taste. Ask your waiter to bring a raw piece to check the marbling. At a butcher's, you can choose the meat based on how well marbled it is. Or not, depending on your preference. The amount of marbling is highest towards the front of the animal. For the pedants, the most pure wagyu is known as full blood. Second comes purebred, achieved by crossing four times back to a wagyu bull (F4). F1 is the first cross with another breed.
These pics, from a Sydney wholesaler, show the marbling in all its glory:
http://www.vicsmeat.com.au/page/wagyu_beef.html
I also found this article fascinating: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/foodmonthly/story/0,,889220,00.html